


recovery,

by NGC1705



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Depression, Gen, Injury Recovery, Orihara Izaya-centric, Psychological Trauma, lapslock, post-ketsu izaya having a bad time, vague mentions of eating disorders and suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 06:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20169811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NGC1705/pseuds/NGC1705
Summary: if you can call it that. something has changed in him, he knows.





	recovery,

bitterness, he is well familiar with. the acid at his tongue, the sick in his gut. it makes him want to lash out, to sink his teeth into the nearest unsuspecting body and tear apart their sense of self piece by fucking piece until they are nothing more than a sniveling husk of the person they could have grown to be. it makes him want to do something stupid, like play around with the disembodied head of his only friend's wife, tossing it back and forth between himself, his clients, his allies, his enemies, as if it were nothing more than a toy. like convince himself he could outmaneuver a nonhuman entity, trapping it with kerosene and carbon monoxide and mocking words, as if he with all his human love and human hate and human wit could ever hope to be enough to overcome the raw power of a _monster._

the bitterness surges up his throat whenever he takes his painkillers with nothing more than water and looks at the swell of his stomach and the soft of his thighs and thinks about how he cannot move, can never move, will sit sedentary and wither and rot no matter how many times he leans over the toilet to choke out the decay.

yes, he wears bitterness so intimately it thrives in his veins.  
the fear, though? the fear is new.

it clings to the lining of his lungs like infection, holding his breath hostage as what little of it escapes in short, stuttering gasps. the coldness of it seeps deep into his bones to turn his very marrow to ice, and he can't help the trembling that wracks his shattered limbs. he wakes up shivering, sometimes, the clang of solid steel on fragile, fragile bones still ringing in his ears, the vertigo that comes with falling still raging in his pulse. he tries to catch himself, sweat-slick palms against his own arms, bracing for the memory of an impact that haunts his wounds—  
and then he laughs. he shudders beneath the covers and laughs so hard his voice goes sore. he laughs and laughs and laughs because doesn't know what else to fucking do.

***

he is not keeping up with his physical therapy, no matter how often kine urges him to.  
(kine doesn't do it for him; he's not that accommodating. it is izaya's responsibility to keep his body from atrophy, but most of the time, he doesn't really see the point.)

***

there are days, or perhaps weeks, where he doesn't feel like leaving his bed. it's gross. his sheets smell like sweat, and his hair sticks uncomfortably to his scalp, and his casts itch. he sighs to himself, bored, "ah, i wish i could just die already," and rolls over until sleep drifts to him.

his ten phones, two laptops, one desktop, and three tablets, have all been dead for months now. the power cords for each of them are _somewhere_, but he can't be bothered to look.

it's so quiet.

***

he's unsure if he welcomes the silence or not.

***

he can't move. he can't eat. he can't sleep. he can't think. he can't breathe. he can't—  
he can't do much of anything, really.

all he can do is lay around like a useless piece of _shit_. which, he supposes, is exactly what he is now.

the plasters itch and itch and itch and itch and he wants nothing more than to scream and claw off his skin and then maybe scald his bared muscle with boiling water just to get it to _stop._

he wants to say it feels the way it did when he was left to bleed out on the street from yodogiri's knife, when he was dumped in a hospital and ignored by those he considered friends. restlessness buzzing beneath the surface of his skin. waiting, waiting, waiting for someone to come finish him off, to confront him with the question of if he cared enough to fight for his life anymore.

(he did. of course he did. now, he's not certain that still holds true.)

***

face constantly twisted in pain. he thinks it at least makes him look harsh, like the way shiki and akabayashi and all the yakuza like them tend to look with their omnipresent scowls. then he doesn't know where that thought is supposed to lead.

***

it's not that he truly wants to be dead, per se, but being killed is a romantic idea.  
if he were honest with himself, he would admit that's only because he's too much of a goddamn coward to end his life with his own hands.

***

but lying is his first language.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in like 2017 and only now admitted to myself that i was never going to do more with it than the vague outline i have here but i do like it enough to share. (voice of "you have jaundice") you have trauma


End file.
